38 Years Later, The Most Secretly Influential Cyberpunk Movie Ever Is Getting A Big Upgrade

With its sheer ubiquity in American pop culture, it’s easy to take for granted how recently it was that anime was exported to the States. There are early examples as far back as the 1960s and 70s: Astro Boy is widely considered to be the first example of an anime finding immense success being syndicated in the United States, and works like Speed Racer and Voltron (a re-edited, dubbed adaptation of the mecha anime Beast King GoLion) followed suit afterwards. But on the whole, many others (including the first attempt at an American release for Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball) failed to find substantial audiences in the chopped-and-screwed versions usually released on television.

It wasn’t truly until the late 1980s that things began to change for the medium. A wave of dubs for popular anime movies hit America due to the efforts of companies like Streamline Pictures and AnimEigo – among the first were the Studio Ghibli films My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service, initially released as in-flight entertainment for passengers flying from North America to Japan on airlines before expanding outwards. But among that initial wave, mostly aimed at younger audiences, came something different: Katsuhiro Otomo’s 1988 film Akira was not only a landmark milestone in the expansion of anime’s influence on the West, but it’s also one of the most seminal works of cyberpunk ever created, and it’s set for a 4K and IMAX re-release in the U.S. later this year.

Officially announced by Crunchyroll on July 2nd, American audiences will once again witness Neo-Tokyo explode in glorious 4K and IMAX in September of this year. A brand new trailer showing off the restoration, which premiered in Japan back in 2020, was released as well, promising to bring the film’s revolutionary animation and shockingly heart-rending dystopian storytelling to an entirely new audience of viewers.

Centered around the friendship and Earth-shattering falling out of two street youths after one of them develops unimaginable telekinetic and cyberkinetic powers, it’s impossible to overstate what a prophetic and staggering piece of work Akira truly is. The dystopian genre, from its inception, has looked towards the future in order to diagnose the problems of today, and Katsuhiro Otomo’s self-directed adaptation of his 1988 manga does precisely that from a lens that many films in the genre overlook – the kids whose futures society has robbed from them. Consigned to a life of petty biker gang activity in the aftermath of an immensely destructive global conflict (which obliterated Tokyo in 1988), our lead characters Shōtarō Kaneda and Tetsuo Shima are the fresh eyes by which we see a world ravaged by nuclear destruction and a military-industrial complex all too eager to exploit the kids left vulnerable in the bleak world created by the same adults who failed them.

Outside of the film’s nigh-apocalyptic worldbuilding and set decoration, the centerpiece of it all is a surprisingly thoughtful and emotionally complex coming-of-age story. The sudden development of Tetsuo’s powers is a brilliantly imaginative exploration of male socialization (among numerous other themes), the way in which young boys are trained to believe that strength and the violent usage of it are cheat codes to increase their self-worth in a society unconcerned with presenting them with other outlets. The hierarchy built atop masculine posturing and colliding egos in the Capsule gang is established as early as the brotherly camaraderie they share, and the eventual conflict brewing between Tetsuo and Kaneda isn’t merely an apocalyptic threat but the tragic explosion of emotions too big for them to articulate, the destruction of a relationship between two boys too hard-headed and stubborn to reveal the depths of their love for each other.

How Akira Changed Anime And Cyberpunk

When Akira first landed on the scene back in 1988, it was a revelation in Japan, but when it migrated to international audiences with its American release in 1989, it opened the floodgates for a medium that had been lying in wait to totally consume the popular culture of the United States. Anime went from being a niche interest struggling to gain wide viewership to something that you could catch Roger Ebert covering on television; the popularity of VHS copies in the early-90s (a ubiquitous artifact in comic book and hobby shops) and the inevitable DVD release in 2001 helped solidify it as a piece of early underground anime culture in the West and it wasn’t long before it eventually claimed its place as one of the most celebrated and influential animated films of all-time.

There is no world in which anime and manga like Pokémon, Dragon Ball, Cowboy Bebop, or Ghost in the Shell attained the international popularity they currently enjoy without Akira laying the foundation beforehand.

That’s to say nothing of the seismic impact the film had on the subgenre of cyberpunk at large. While Katsuhiro Otomo was partially influenced by classic anime like Gigantor and Hollywood cinema such as Easy Rider and Bonnie and Clyde, the film itself went on to directly inspire untold neon-lit dystopias and technologically-infused apocalypses – The Matrix, Dark City, Tetsuo: The Iron Man, CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 and more all owe a direct lineage to Akira for illustrating a future ravaged by the excesses of techno-capitalism and military domination.

Even beyond the realm of science fiction, you don’t have to look far to see artists still wearing Akira on its sleeve: just take a cursory glance at the sheer, mind-numbing amount of times Kaneda’s iconic bike slide has been homaged throughout pop culture, from Batman: The Animated Series to Jordan Peele’s Nope. We all live in a world eclipsed by the massive cultural impact of Otomo’s masterpiece, and thanks to Crunchyroll and Sony, both longtime fans and newcomers have the opportunity to bear witness to it later this year.

Akira 4K and IMAX 2026 theatrical release date

The 4K re-release of Akira hits theaters on September 4th.